


Repairs and Maintenance

by Jondera



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: One Shot, Side Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29594028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jondera/pseuds/Jondera
Summary: Over the years, the Rebel Alliance touched many lives with their actions; directly, or indirectly.  Some of those events were seen by multitudes; recorded and passed down for posterity.Some of them were not.But that doesn't mean that they weren't important.
Kudos: 1





	Repairs and Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the Escape from Cloud City at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
> 
> Thanks to MathIsMagic for beta reading.

_There is no event so great, so singularly impactful, that it were not built upon thousands of other, seemingly mundane events which combined to create it._

\-----------------------------------------------

Cassari fumed to herself as she hauled her bag of tools down the access shaft towards the third gas refinery control station. A year ago, when she’d left her family’s farmstead to avoid getting roped into a marriage she didn’t want and a life of farming, she’d thought that Cloud City would be a fine place to work for a while — far enough out that the Empire wouldn’t bother it, diverse enough to let her make her own way. And it had been — things had been going well for her.

Until two days ago, when the kriffing Empire had shown up after all. It hadn’t even taken six hours after their arrival for stormtroopers to be crawling over her assigned work areas, poking at everything and breaking at least four different machines that she’d had to go back in and fix… all without cussing out any of the bleeding idiots who just _had_ to go poking around in delicate machinery checking for contraband or rebels or who knew what. After all, those same bleeding idiots were still in the room, with blasters, and she didn’t much want to get shot.

And here she was, dragging herself up to one of the control stations when by all rights she ought to be in bed, all because of a report about some power feedback to the computer systems through the control line to the carbonite chamber. She didn’t even want to think about what the Empire might be using that for, and hoped they wouldn’t trash the place too much — those systems were dangerous, and a royal pain to repair.

Passing along an outer walkway to the tower she needed, she heard shouts from below her. Glancing over the railing, she quickly stepped back as she saw a squad of stormtroopers running into position, blasters at the ready. But before the troopers had reached their destinations, more figures appeared, and shots started firing — there was a Wookie, and… that was Administrator Calrissian, and also Leia Organa! Cass almost sat down in surprise. The renegade Princess of Alderaan, one of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance and one of the Empire’s most wanted. And she was here. 

Cass watched in awe as Leia and Calrissian and the Wookie blasted their way through the entire squad of stormtroopers like the Empire’s finest shock troops were little more than clumsy incompetants. The Wookie charged forward, roaring its challenge and blowing away the lead troopers with a bowcaster, while the princess and administrator took the flanks, picking targets of opportunity as stormtroopers exposed themselves in the face of the Wookie’s furious advance, their shots hammering home with brutal accuracy into the joints and weak points of the imperial armor. It was over in minutes; the troopers were scattered on the ground, and the rebels quickly continued their trip, an astromech trailing behind them on the way towards the docking bays.

Cass pulled herself back to her feet, thinking quickly. Any repairs to the control systems were a secondary concern, now — if senior Rebel leadership was on Cloud City, and Administrator Calrissian was helping them, then nobody on the station was going to be safe. Whatever the fallout might be, the Empire was going to crack down on Bespin, and she needed to get off. But she knew that nobody would be getting off if they just jumped in a ship and flew off — the imperials had control of docking bay security, and their navy ships were too powerful. Squaring her shoulders, she grabbed her bag and resumed her march.

Arriving at the nearest control room, she quickly dropped her tool bag next to a console and started pulling up access codes. She couldn’t directly interface with the station’s security and defensive systems, but her maintenance and repair access codes gave her broad capabilities to turn systems _off_ as needed for safe access. She chose her targets with care,using her friend Linz’s access code — which she’d been given the month before to cover for him after he went on a drunk bender — she input maintenance requests for all the critical security monitoring systems and short-range defense systems around all the main docking bays, along with two of the station’s secondary power plants and one of the primary environmental control plants. Even as she was finishing that and logging her friend out, she heard the door whisper open behind her and the modulated voice of a stormtrooper call out; “Hey, what are you doing there?”

Turning carefully, Cass kept her right hand out of sight as it trailed over her tool bag, looking at the trooper and giving him her maintenance ID code and holding out the chip folio she’d received in her quarters with her left hand, with the automatic maintenance request relating to the power spike from carbonite operations on it. The trooper scowled, and crossed the room to take the chip, but even as he was reaching out, a voice came blaring over the station intercom; “Attention, this is Lando Calrissian. Attention. The Empire has taken control of the city. I advise everyone to leave before more Imperial troops arrive.” Both Cass and the trooper turned towards the intercom in reflex, but Cass — who had been expecting something of the sort — reacted first. She brought her hand up out of her tool bag, gripping her arc induction melder by feel, jamming the head of the tool up under the trooper’s breastplate and cranking the power to max.

Cass grabbed the dying trooper’s rifle, setting it on the counter next to her terminal, ignoring the smoking body collapsed on the control room floor. Logging back in to the maintenance system under her own access ID, she quickly claimed all of the maintenance requests she had filed under her friend’s name, confirmed the need for maintenance, and input her codes to turn off all the relevant systems. She ignored all the warning codes that flashed across the screen as she shut down power to half the city’s security and ancillary support systems. A moment of amusement at the imperial techs’ probable reaction to the situation crossed her mind - after all, systems shut down for maintenance needed either a confirmation code from the person doing the maintenance — that is to say, her — or the maintenance supervisor — one of her friends — or the systems administrators, who appeared to be joining the rebellion… or they wouldn’t turn back on. Learning unfamiliar systems and tracking the fault far enough to be able to override and turn all these systems back on would take weeks of painstaking work for whatever teams of techs the empire assigned to get the refinery platform working again. But that pleasant reverie was pushed back as Cass refocused on her immediate priorities.

Turning back to the terminal, she punched up a message to her friends, directing them to meet her at one of the docking bays set aside for exterior maintenance use. She then filed an order with the bay’s automated support system to fuel and pre-flight one of the armed, hyper-capable repair and supply ships that were occasionally sent out to respond to distress calls. Powering down the terminal, she kicked out the power connectors behind the desk while scooping up her tool bag and the dead stormtrooper’s blaster, before heading for the door.

She was able to get quite a ways across the city towards the maintenance docking bays before the growing crowds of panicked people grew chaotic enough that she pulled herself off the main thoroughfares and into the maintenance accessways. They were twisty, and more than occasionally less safe than she’d like, but she was able to make better progress even waiting for misplaced vents and power converters and whatever else the lunatics who had cobbled these systems together had thought was reasonable for having in access passages.

Still, she was not surprised to find that others had reached the docking bay first. As she slipped out of the maintenance passage in one of the bay’s side rooms, she heard Linz through the passage in the main bay — she couldn’t make out the words, but he sounded worried, and then the filtered tones of a stormtrooper barking orders followed and she swallowed a moment of rising panic. Peering around the doorway, she saw three stormtroopers in the bay, with Linz and Orell by the door, their hands clearly in the open and away from any possible weapons. Linz was clearly trying to fast-talk the troopers — fair, most people didn’t see past his earnest face to the card sharp that had cleaned out more than a few tourists at local bars. But Cass didn’t have time for Linz to talk them around. She had never been the best shot, but she hadn’t grown up on a farm without learning how to shoot a blaster, and a motionless, man-sized target at 30 meters was not an especially difficult target.

Orell couldn’t quite control the twitch of her eyes as Cass stepped out of cover and leveled the blaster rifle, and one of the troopers had started to turn in curiosity when Cass’ first shot took the leftmost imperial in the back, laying him out flat on the floor. Both other troopers started spinning towards Cass, bringing their own rifles to bear, even as Linz dove backwards to get out of the way. But unlike the troopers, Cass’ rifle was already leveled, and she only had to track a bit to the right and fire again, and the second trooper was still bringing his weapon up when a blast hit him in the side, then a second in the shoulder and he went down. Cass continued swinging her captured rifle around, but the third trooper was in position now, and…

And then Orell tackled him from behind, the unexpected weight throwing him forward and knocking the blaster from his hands. He might have been able to overpower the more slightly built — and unarmored — mechanic, but as soon as she had knocked him down she rolled off him and out of the way, leaving Cass’ field of fire open and two more quick shots left him motionless on the floor.

Cass jogged forward even as Linz and Orell scooped up the three dropped blaster rifles. Only a moment later, Hava — their team’s supervisor — skidded into the bay, her own blaster in hand, but she holstered it quickly when she saw that the troopers had already been dealt with. Beckoning behind her, her younger brother, Kalin — only 13 — and a couple other younglings who either had no family or no family they cared to claim crept into the bay. Cass swept her left hand towards the maintenance ship. “She should already be fueled and pre-flighted, and the bay security systems are down. I imagine there’s more than a few ships fleeing the station, if we’re careful we should be able to slip past the imperial blockade in the mess.” She gave Orell a look — the older woman didn’t talk much about her past, but it was no secret that she loved hot starships more than their crews, and everyone suspected she’d done a few years as a smuggler.

Orell simply nodded. “No problem, kids. Here’s the ten credit question, though; where are we going?”

A moment of silence spread around the bay. Everyone was weighing the options — the places like Cloud City — independent frontier operations where someone could make a decent living and expect to be relatively safe, where neither the Empire nor the Hutts nor any of the other gangs or cartels had stepped in… were few and far between, and vanishing quickly. None of them relished trying to find shelter in Imperial space, but with children in their group, Hutt space was no better.

Cass cleared her throat. “I’d like to sign on with the rebellion. They’ve proven again and again that while they may not be able to face the Empire openly yet, they’ll get there eventually. And Princess Leia was here, tonight — Administrator Calrission was with her. I saw them shooting their way through stormtroopers to get out of the city.

Orell simply looked impassive for a moment, then shrugged. Linz cocked his head to the side, then grinned. Hava looked from face to face then sighed. “I had hoped to spare the children a military camp, but you’re probably right that it’s the best option available to us now. And I admit that being able to get some of our own back from the Empire does rather strike my fancy.”

Cass nodded. “That’s the plan then. Let’s get on board and out of here before the imps have any more time to get themselves organized.” With that, she turned up the ramp onto the ship, everyone else following.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

_One year later, aboard the Rebel Alliance cruiser_ Independence _, above the forest moon of Endor:_

Cass, Linz, and Hava jogged down the passage on their way back from their most recent job - Orell had taken the opportunity to join the fighter wings — when Cass’ comm buzzed. She slid to a stop and keyed it. “Cass here.”

“This is damage control, Turbolaser 17 just lost power, we think the hit went in between frames 73 and 74 and blew the power runs, and maybe the control links. We need that laser back up.” Then the call cut off as damage control, ever busy in a battle as frantic as this was turning out to be, turned their attention to some other problem.

Cass swore, and plugged her datapad into the nearest ship socket to pull up the map and check power lines. They were at frame 76, not far aft from the site of the damage, but a quick check of the backup power lines showed that the regular backup had already been shunted for use by Shield Generator 13. They didn’t dare pull power off the shield generators at the moment — the whole point was preventing damage, not taking more of it.

“Linz, get down to the power junction at 72, I need you to shut down power to the main runs to turbolaser 17. Hava, get your cutting tools out, we’re going to have to make holes in a couple bulkheads to run parallel lines. I’m going to hit the supply cache and grab the cables we’ll need and meet you there.” The other two nodded, Linz already jogging down the hall.

By the time Cass reached frame 74, Hava already had the bulkhead opened up to expose the mess of smoking and half-melted wires. Grimacing, they quickly extended the access holes to locate intact sections of wiring on both sides of the damage, and set about splicing fresh cable in to shunt around the damage. The control runs were, in fact, destroyed along with the power lines, but Cass had grabbed replacements for those as well, and they had more than enough cable taps to make the necessary connections. It took only a few minutes for them to get everything connected properly, and Cass took only a moment to run a quick load test on her datapad — as soon as the telltales flashed green she pulled the test leads and keyed her comm again; “Linz, give her juice!”

Sparks spat from the ends of the cables as power flowed, but only a few and only for a moment, then a nearby panel keyed to life, showing Turbolaser 17 with nominal power — only 83% of usual power load, but enough to fire at an acceptable level - and no control delay to central targeting. Cass sighed in relief as the barely perceptible hum and thump of the large energy mount firing rumbled through the bulkhead, and nodded to Hava in satisfaction. Linz jogged up from the power junction, and all three of them grabbed their tools and started making for their assigned stations as damage control party C-6.

Maybe they’d never get any medals, or see their names in the faxes, but when all this settled, they’d at least know that they’d done their part, and nobody could ever tell them otherwise.


End file.
